Upon Seeing Exceptionally Beautiful People, Trees or Fields

May the whale stay still as we
pause the boat to remove the net.

May the net find its burial in smoke
or fire. May fire be modest and rise

from the field to release seeds that
have been forgotten. Let them explode

outwards, theirs is a harsh birth.
Let summer pause until its offspring

find the grandfather tree, prepared
by ants, guardians of blind passage

in the ground. Let the ground rest,
there is more corn than the animals

can eat, and earth is a riddle that repeats
itself. Let the dove with its white belly

remain ignorant of my bedroom.
For there are those who are afraid,

and don’t we all depend on a nest.
Even the wind, which circles the wide

open spaces, and loves the grass as much
as the airborne, and sighs and settles there.

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Jane Medved is the author of Deep Calls To Deep (winner of the Many Voices Project, New Rivers Press) and the chapbook Olam, Shana, Nefesh (Finishing Line Press) Recent essays and poems have appeared in Ruminate, The North American Review, The Cider Press Review, The Normal School, and The Seneca Review. She is the poetry editor of the Ilanot Review, and a visiting lecturer in the Graduate Creative Writing Program at Bar Ilan University, Tel Aviv.